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Supremely upset Disappointed, How to Always BeBy Rick Horowitz
"You promised!" And one more time, just to be sure they've heard him: "You promised!!" Robbie B. Right, curled in a ball, his tiny fists pounding on the hard wood floor. His face is redder than red, and the steam pumping from his ears shows he's still at a full boil. He's been this way for days. He's been this way, in fact, since the moment he heard the name "Harriet Miers." Four -- or was it five? -- little syllables from the president's mouth, and Robbie's perfect little world came crashing down. Robbie B. Right had been dreaming of the moment for years. And he was hardly alone. Hundreds -- thousands -- of Robbie B. Rights had been dreaming of the very same moment for just as long. The moment, that is, when the President of the United States would take the Supreme Court of the United States, tie it up with a pretty little bow, and hand it over to Robbie and his friends. "It isn't fair!" After all, Robbie and his friends had been waiting for decades. (That's a long time for anyone to wait for anything.) They really thought it was going to happen this time -- that they'd get exactly the kind of Supreme Court they'd been hoping for. That they'd been praying for. Of course, they'd really thought it was going to happen plenty of other times, too. This wasn't the first president who'd promised; so had others -- if not with words, then with a certain tilt of the head, a certain wink of the eye. They understood each other, Robbie B. Right and these presidents. He'd delivered for them. Now they'd deliver for him. Except that they didn't. Not to Robbie's satisfaction, anyway. Hardly ever to Robbie's satisfaction. The people these presidents put onto the court weren't nearly as bold as Robbie wanted. They weren't nearly as brash as Robbie wanted. And some of them -- Some of them weren't anything at all like Robbie wanted. Some of them got to the court and started changing! They weren't deciding cases exactly the way Robbie and his friends expected them to be deciding cases. They were even lining up with: the wrong element. They'd been "seduced by the liberal Washington establishment," Robbie and his friends told each other. These justices -- these supposedly distinguished men and women, these good conservatives in whom Robbie and his friends had placed so much faith -- had cast away their good conservative principles for a favorable mention in the New York Times, for a warmer reception at one of those Georgetown dinner parties. What a disappointment they'd been! And now the name "Harriet Miers," and the president insisting they won't be fooled again. And they're supposed to take his word for it. If they didn't know better... It was barely a shadow of a thought, this thing that had crept so recently into Robbie's mind. He and his friends might whisper it among themselves, but it was nothing any of them ever expected to be saying, or hearing. If they didn't know better, they might start thinking that they'd been used. That the Supreme Court of their dreams was nothing more than that -- a dream, something bright and shiny dangled in front of their eyes by clever politicians to get the envelopes stuffed and the phone calls made and the doorbells rung and the ballots cast. Could they have been that naive? That gullible? Better not to think about it. Better to stay curled in a ball, fists pounding, steam pumping. "You promised!!!" Posted 10/18/05.
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Rick Horowitz
